‘Taken in excess and combined with bad feeling and general malnutrition.’
‘Harriet hasn’t come with you?’
‘No … She’s still troubled with her back.’
My father looked at me keenly, obviously interested. It was his weakness: nobody was safe from him; even after years of hypochondriacs, psychosomatics, spoiled, pampered women, truly sick people who never left off describing their symptoms; after all this he was still as keen as a young man to hear more, to treat everyone, to succour every last sick person in the world. Although I could not copy him, I could admire him.
I said: ‘It’s only the usual thing. A few days in bed always puts her right.’
He sipped his tomato juice. ‘The play? Is it still running?’
‘There’s no sign of a falling off yet.’
‘It will make a lot of money for you?’
‘A lot of money, yes.’
‘Are you happy, Morris? Does this satisfy you? Does it satisfy you as success in medicine might have?’
‘More. Me being me. Though I recognise your standards as the higher ones.’
He didn’t deny this. ‘I suppose the tax people will be down on you pretty heavily.’
‘Yes. But it can be spread back. And there are still a few ways of lightening the load.’
He breathed doubt on to the rim of his glass. ‘I’m still not satisfied—I suppose now never will be—that you were in the wrong profession. Skill in medicine is often a slow growth. Perhaps we were wrong to persuade you too early. Four or five years at something else first.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I suppose Harriet is very delighted that she backed a winner after all.’
‘Yes … we’re both delighted if it comes to that.’
‘I asked you down, Morris, and I’d have liked her to come too—I asked you down for a special reason. Because I wanted you to meet … I’m getting married again.’
I swallowed a large mouthful of drink, and the gin burned my throat and all the way down. I was slightly surprised in myself at the shock this news gave me. It was like being slapped across the face by a bramble in the dark. Although he had been very fond of my mother, she like everything else had taken second place to his abiding passion. It had never occurred to me that he would ever look at another woman.
‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘that’s quite a surprise. Do I know her?’
‘I doubt it. She’s a ward sister, Helen Collins. She’s coming to dinner tonight. Actually she should be here by now.’
‘Well, well, that is a surprise.’ I tried hard to think of something to say, something which was neither grudging nor patronising. After all, it was no longer my business what he did with his life. ‘I suppose really you’ve been—very much alone since Mother died.’
‘That’s it. One needs a certain degree of … I’m fifty-nine; she’s thirty-two—same age as you, I believe. It’s a big difference but she makes light of it. And as I feel at present I should be good for another twenty active years. Cellular degeneration is a relatively slow process these days.’
Chapter Four
She turned up ten minutes later, long faced and graceless. True, she had a good figure, high breasts and a young skin, but there seemed nothing else to recommend her except that she obviously adored him. To the normal reverence that a ward sister gives to one of the leading consultants of the city had no doubt been added the latent sexuality and gratitude of a woman for whom hopes of a family life had been receding.
And he was obviously much taken up with her, showing it in a way he’d never shown my mother.
She was on edge meeting me for the first time; the only child and a successful playwright; if Widow’s Peak had made little impression on my father, it had made plenty on her. She was brittle, over-bright, noisy, asked unnecessary questions and then half answered them before I could; laughed at her own pointless jokes, talked in clichés, tried too obviously to look after us both. If I hadn’t disliked her on sight I should have felt sorry for her.
Later, when they got talking together about medicine, she began to relax, and I could see that no doubt she would make him a good wife after her own fashion. But I couldn’t understand him at all. It was a big come-down, a concession of a sort I had thought he would never consider.
She had her own car and went off in it about ten. I had been persuaded to stay the night, and after she left we stayed up talking idly about one thing and another, carefully avoiding reference to her. I’m sure he expected me to say something, but I could say nothing against her and could find nothing to say in her favour.
It was my old room, and the same pictures were still on the walls, the same wallpaper, even some of my own possessions were about that I’d not wanted to take away: school-books, medical books, a photograph at Guy’s, a trouser press with one screw missing. I lay in the bed and listened to midnight striking and tried to think of Alexandra.
But here it was an effort, instead of—as usual—its being an effort not to think of her. Here the old life was strong. That was the corner of the bed on which my mother had sat thirteen years ago when she had finally prevailed on me to go on with medicine after I had decided to quit. A strange woman with an irresistible mixture—where her only son was concerned—of love and firmness, so that all through my childhood where any important decision was involved her way took precedence over my own. Love is easy to combat without discipline, and discipline without love. Together they are too strong for all but the completely ruthless. So although my childhood had seldom been unhappy, I had moved all the time to a beat not my own. Even at Guy’s a sort of natal cord of fondness and understanding and expectation had existed, which had never been cut.
Over there she had bathed my leg when I had fallen out of the tree; here she had sat in the green moquette velvet chair and read to me when I was recovering from measles; here long years back, long years back into an un-remembered childhood, she had been when nothing else had been, in sickness and in health; one asked for her by instinct, the most natural and most purposive demand in life.
So from a barely self-conscious assembly of immediate needs, growing into a very self-conscious and introspective young man, the figure with him in the room had scarcely changed. Greying, thinner, but always understanding, and always expecting the best, she had been the symbol of permanence in this house, a loving but oppressive permanence. That came back now I had come back.
Harriet was amused when I told her. ‘ Good to him. I hope I shall be able to go to the wedding and look as disapproving as he did at mine.’
‘He wasn’t disapproving of you, but only of what he thought you stood for.’
‘The wastrel world of the arts. The ancient army of time-passers. But it wasn’t just that I belonged to the wrong world; he wouldn’t have minded an actress daughter-in-law; it was because I was pulling you into the wrong world. I degraded you in two ways: first, by persuading you to aim at the wrong target; second, by supporting you while you did it—a position of dependence not fit for any self-respecting man.’
‘Nor is it,’ I said. ‘Thank God I’m out of it, unfailingly tactful though you always were.’
She said: ‘Sometimes, Morris, you talk like a bad playwright. By the way, Ralph rang up and wants you to lunch with him at L’Ecu de France next Thursday.’
‘I can’t do that. I was going back to Paris on Wednesday.’
Harriet began to smooth Royal Jelly into her face. ‘You’re getting frightfully fond of Paris. Any day now, I shall come to suspect you of having an affaire with a little vedette.’
She said it as if it was the last thing that was likely to happen; but because she had said it I felt I did not want to question Ralph Diary’s date.
When I lunched with him Ralph was full of a film interest that was being shown by one of the big Hollywood companies in Widow’s Peak. I listened with a disbelieving ear, knowing how often ‘interest’ was shown, how often it blew itself out in a few generalities and was overtaken by the next sensation. After
we had finished our meal he asked how the new play was coming along.
‘Not well at present. I can’t write about the characters until they are more alive, and yet I know that until I write about them they won’t come alive.… It’s a blockage I’ve had before.’
Ralph stared moodily at some ash which had dropped on the table-cloth from his big cigar. ‘And how long d’you think before it’s finished?’
‘Huh … anything up to a year.’
‘I’ve been wondering, you know. I’ve been wondering about Rhesus Boy.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, it was a good play—still is; I’ve always thought so. It might be an idea to consider reviving it, putting it on, say, about next Christmas.’ He brushed the ash away with a plump finger. ‘As a sort of interim measure, you know. The fact that Widow’s Peak may still be running will do no harm at all. One success will lead to another.’
‘A flop won’t help anyone.’
‘There’s no reason why it should be, now. It’s got many of the qualities of Widow’s Peak and the climate is ripe in the way it wasn’t four years ago. To laugh at tragedy is the surest formula for success today. I don’t mean this in any derogatory sense. I’m pretty sure there are two or three managements who would do it. Actually Harriet was saying …’ He stopped.
‘What was she saying, Ralph?’
‘Why? Why that tone of voice?’
‘There’s no ‘‘ tone of voice.’’ But I know she enjoys plotting things with you while I’m away.’
‘… Not at all. But she did say last week that if the new play was going to be long delayed there might be some point in trying to bring on one of the old ones. That’s only good sense, surely. It’s the crest of the wave, and the more talked about you are the more permanent your success will be.’ When I didn’t answer he said: ‘Seriously, old chap, you should be grateful that you’ve got a wife with so much nous, and one who cares so much.’
‘Of course I am. Of course I am.’
The young man who would be taking second lead in the new play in Paris was called Daniel Deramore. At present he was playing in a farce at the Gramont and had often asked me to go round to see it. Now that July was advancing business was slacking off, and they would probably only just keep going until the beginning of the holiday.
I saw Alexandra on the Saturday and we drove out to Puteaux, a working-class district just across the Seine from Neuilly, where she had a favourite restaurant presided over by the fattest man in Paris. We ate there superbly, saw the patron’s collection of paintings, and I bought a small water colour for about forty pounds to take back to Harriet. Alexandra told me that on Tuesday the Fayardes were leaving for Cap-Ferrat where they had taken a villa for the summer. She would be staying behind for a few days seeing to their affairs, then would follow them. Tuesday would be the thirteenth of July, so I asked her to meet me in the evening, and then we would go on to the last night of Première à Gauche.
But before this I met her again on the Sunday and on the Monday: briefly for she was busy seeing to the Comtesse’s packing. By waiting about in Neuilly I was able to see her twice on both days. The Fayardes lived in an avenue called the Boulevard du Château in a big eighteenth-century house on a corner, with a garden and a separate staff house forming an L with the main part.
Seeing Alexandra like this was no help to me, nor I think to her. Each meeting tied another string. Two people cannot contrive without moving nearer together.
On the Tuesday Première à Gauche turned out to be more typically the French farce than one would have imagined would have survived into the sophisticated sixties: a cast of four, adjoining bedroom doors, mistaken identities, endless lies, smutty innuendoes, the lot. I thought of Jackie de la Fayarde’s remarks at the cocktail party.
Alexandra was wearing her hair drawn back behind her ears, and this made her look very young. A high-necked, very smart jersey, a tight skirt well below the knee but slit at the sides, high-heeled shoes of glovelike leather, gave her the look of a young Parisienne of about eighteen.
After the performance we went round to see Deramore and found him surrounded by the rest of the cast drinking cheap champagne. Others were in the small room—understudies, stage hands—and everyone was talking at once. Deramore, in between rubbing the grease paint off his face and sharing his glass with the two women in the cast, seemed very flattered that I’d come to see his show. They all crowded round me, asking my opinion with obvious deference, shrugging deprecatingly, discussing the shortcomings of the French theatre and the shortcomings of each other, giggling, exchanging witticisms, but always deferring back to me. In my turn I was flattered by their respect and anxious to justify it. (Perhaps one gets one’s priorities mixed, but, while paying no account to the praise of the elderly, rich and famous, I found the attention and admiration of these half-dozen young French actors tremendously heady and exciting.)
After we’d talked for a bit—and I noticed one of the actors, called Colé, eyeing Alexandra with interest—Deramore explained that they were all off to the Place de la Concorde, and why did we not come too? On the night before Quatorze Juillet there was always a great open-air ball at which actors and actresses appeared to raise money for charity. Everybody agreed with him—why should we not come?—and I looked doubtfully at Alexandra, having thought to have a quiet supper with her—but I could see at once by the glint in her eyes that she was attracted by the suggestion.
We all squeezed somehow into two taxis. I shared a middle seat with Alexandra and Michele something, the red-haired lead of Première à Gauche. As we got to the Madeleine, the traffic grew thicker, and after edging a little way down the Rue Royale our taxi driver gave up, and we piled out laughing and chatting to join the multitude.
The night was fine and warm, and a number of bands were playing in the square. We could see nothing of the people from the other taxi. I took Alexandra’s bare arm just above the elbow, and together we followed Deramore and Michele towards the dais in the centre of the square.
Thirty-two is not old, but what you do with your years is more important than numerals on a passport. Introspective and a bit morbid, I had seen less of the carefree idiocies of adolescence than most men. This evening, which might have seemed commonplace to many, was for me full of a resurgence of life.
The great square with its thousands of milling excited people, the bands beating out their rhythms into the warm summer air, the lights with the flood-lit buildings behind, the high-spirited jinking Deramore and Michele ahead of us, but especially the scent and feel of the girl whose arm I was holding: I was twenty again.
The other two began to dance, so I put my arm round Alexandra and led her after them. One advantage of the French at carnival times is that no one seems to care what steps you do, whether it’s the latest gyration or an eighteenth-century gavotte.
It was curious that in a number of weeks of friendship, during which our talk, our interchange of looks and thoughts, had grown steadily more intimate, we’d progressed in physical contact scarcely at all; so that we were now holding each other for the first time; and although nothing could have been more public than a dance on the Place de la Concorde, nothing in another sense is more private than being lost in a crowd. You have the isolation of anonymity.
We danced three dances and had lost our friends. When each dance stopped we didn’t break apart but stayed in each other’s arms until the next began. She was breathing deeply against me, and since our exertions had been pretty small I didn’t think she was like that because of them. I looked into her eyes, which glittered with excitement. I saw pupil and iris for the first time with the intimacy of the act of love. I lost myself in them. Her mouth began to speak and then fluttered into silence as I kissed it. I began to speak endearments in words probably unfamiliar to myself, as if the occasion were inventing them.
At last the music stopped, it seemed more permanently, and with an effort we separated. People were moving about, pushing agains
t us.
I said: ‘ You can be civilised, cerebral, sensible so long … and then the drawbridge drops and you’re lost!’
‘Lost and found.’
‘Alexandra, I’m defeated.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well, it looks to me as if from now on you’re going to have to think for us both.’
‘Think … It isn’t easy for me to think, Morris. What did you suppose?’
‘I don’t suppose anything now except that I want you too badly to be reasonable or to care what happens tomorrow or next week. I love you, I want you; there aren’t any qualifying clauses.’
‘Other people have said that to me before,’ she said, ‘but I have only ever wanted to hear it from you.’
Deramore and Michele appeared in the distance, along with two other actors whom I vaguely knew. Before we could help it they had seen us and we were surrounded. It’s hard to describe the exuberance of that night. My passion for Alexandra was all a part of it, and, what was more, it seemed only fair that this passion should be gratified as part of the night’s adventure. It ought to be met without thought of the past or concern for the future. The light-heartedness of it all postulated an ideal world in which such an end was realisable.
For an hour more we stayed with the actors, dancing and laughing and talking. Deramore proclaimed he was hungry, so we all straggled noisily together to a bistro he knew of just across the river. There we found a long table out of doors and supped and wined and laughed and talked. Michele gave an imitation of B. B. in her latest star role Man So Desired Me, and Fernand Colé acted de Gaulle taking his seat in heaven. A French international rugby-player was seen and hailed and brought to the table. Deramore, it seemed, had played high-class rugby until two years ago when he had broken his nose and decided the game did not go with his career.
After the Act Page 4